


Touch My Body

by MoreThanSlightly (cadignan)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Massage, Oral Sex, Post-Season/Series 07, Season 8 Doesn't Exist, Sharing a Bed, Touch-Starved Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 15:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16997532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadignan/pseuds/MoreThanSlightly
Summary: Who is Shiro to demand more than he’s been given? He’s already on his second life. He’s alive and his friends are alive and if they’re not offering to touch him, far be it from him to ask.





	Touch My Body

The first few days in this body, there’d been a lot of touching. Hugs. Arms slung over shoulders. A hand on his elbow if he wasn’t walking steadily. Coran had even ruffled his hair like he was a little kid.

Everything had been dreamlike and overwhelming then. Every sensation a little too much. Newly embodied, his senses bombarded him with a constant array of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. He’d been wobbly and slow to react, and he has a dim memory of Lance saying “so how long is Shiro gonna be tripping balls just from being alive?” and Pidge shushing him, then giggling and saying, “it is cute, though.”

Keith had kicked everyone out after that. Then, in private, he’d given Shiro a truly mind-blowing hug. Long, silent, and fierce, with both his arms wrapped tightly around Shiro and the full length of their bodies pressed together. He’d tucked his head against Shiro’s chest, which means he hadn’t been watching to check if Shiro’s pupils would get huge so he could tease. It hadn’t been a joke. It had been something else entirely.

Shiro can’t remember if he got hard then—probably—but he gets hard now, remembering it. They’ve hardly touched since. Shiro’s jealous of his past self. He’d been too dazed to appreciate all that touching for the rare gift it was, and by the time he’d stopped feeling like every brush of someone else’s hand lit up his brain with fireworks, no one was touching him.

Especially not Keith.

He couldn’t blame the team for not knowing what to do with him on the journey. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He wasn’t the Black Paladin anymore. Wasn’t their superior officer. Wasn’t even a particularly useful teammate.

And all that _without_ taking into account how he’d nearly murdered Keith.

At least the long journey to Earth and the subsequent planet-threatening battle had been a distraction from his loneliness. Now he’s captain of another ship and another team, and they’re rebuilding, and things are alright. Sometimes an MFE pilot or a Paladin will punch him affectionately on the shoulder. Sometimes Keith reaches for a datapad in the briefing room at the same time as him and their hands brush. Who is Shiro to demand more than he’s been given? He’s already on his second life. He’s alive and his friends are alive and if they’re not offering to touch him, far be it from him to ask.

There are still belligerent Galra outposts in the galaxy, fragments of the Empire trying to reassemble themselves, so Voltron and Atlas wage battles in space every few days. Even when they win—and so far they always have—it’s brutal and tiring and the work never seems to end.

He and Keith mostly talk about their missions. When it’s just the two of them, Shiro prolongs those conversations unnecessarily, fills them with heartfelt praise for Keith’s skills, and tacks on dumb small-talk questions like “how’s your mom?” when it’s clear they have nothing more to say about work. Sometimes Keith gives him a searching look, like he’s just on the verge of some realization. It never goes anywhere.

*

Once, Shiro walks in on Keith and Kosmo sharing one of the couches in the common room, Keith grumbling about how heavy and smelly and drooly the wolf is while stroking his fur. Sick with longing, Shiro backs up so fast his heel squeaks against the hallway flooring, and then Keith pops up from the couch and catches sight of him.

“Shiro?”

Shit. There’s no reason to run. It’s not like he caught them doing something inappropriate. Shiro’s only blushing because—because he saw Keith cuddling the wolf and thought about—“Uh. Hi.”

“Don’t just stand there,” Keith says, like everything is simple. He pats the space next to them on the couch. “Come over here.”

At Keith’s urging, Kosmo crawls halfway into Shiro’s lap. His tail wags happily, thumping against Keith’s chest, and Keith has to bat it away from his face a couple of times.

“He’s too big to sit on one person, anyway,” Keith says.

Shiro makes a noise of assent, and Kosmo paws at him until he obliges the wolf by petting him, his hands sinking deep into the fur. Kosmo is heavy and warm in his lap, and it’s soothing to run his hands through the wolf’s ruff.

It’s nice.

It’s also not really what Shiro wants, but he tries to keep his gaze away from Keith. He’s moderately successful, but not looking at Keith means he doesn’t see what Keith is doing, when Kosmo twists, they both reach to offer him a belly rub, and their hands bump.

Keith reacts in a perfectly normal, measured, socially acceptable way, which is to say he moves his hand slightly and then continues petting Kosmo.

Shiro tamps down an urge to grab Keith’s hand, flushes hot with embarrassment, and then makes a hurried, disastrous effort to extricate himself from the couch and the wolf and Keith. “I, um—work, you know?” he says as he makes his exit. He shuffles down the hall and tries to wipe away the image of Keith and Kosmo peering over the back of the couch with the same wide-eyed, bewildered stare.

God. He has to fix this. Shiro can’t spend the rest of his life freaking out whenever someone touches him. Especially if that person is someone he has to work with in close proximity. Especially if that person is Keith.

But how can he even broach the topic? “So, coming back from the dead made me sort of crazy and sometimes I’m so lonely I’m not sure I’m real” has the virtue of being true, but nothing else to recommend it. Shiro doesn’t want to say any of those words out loud, let alone to Keith. “I know this body tried to murder you in recent memory, but I live here now and I need a hug” is all wrong, too. Shiro can’t start the conversation with their fight, not if he plans to end it by asking for something from Keith. It hasn’t escaped him that things used to be easy between them. They used to touch each other and now they don’t. Keith is afraid of him now. That’s why he stopped. That’s why Shiro can’t ask him for this.

Shiro will have to ask someone else, then. All he has to do to elicit an offer of hugging from Hunk is look vaguely dejected in his presence. Shiro accepts. It’s wonderful. It makes him feel a little less like he’s starving.

But it doesn’t make him want Keith’s touch any less.

*

One day, Keith claps his hand over Shiro’s shoulder while they’re on the bridge—it’s casual, platonic, the kind of touch they’ve been giving each other for years, the kind that’s become vanishingly rare—and Shiro can’t stop himself from closing his eyes in bliss.

He snaps them open a moment later, forces himself to pay attention to whatever the hell they’re talking about. The warmth and pressure of Keith’s hand through his suit shouldn’t mean that much to him. Shiro needs a shower and a good night’s rest and maybe some time alone with his hand and then he’ll be fine.

Shiro acquires all of those things for himself and it makes no difference: Keith’s next touch is just as powerful as the first. One hand on his shoulder, both of them fully clothed, and he’s weak for it.

Keith keeps it up and then some. The fourth shoulder-touch ends with Keith’s hand sliding down his bicep, practically a caress. On the fifth day, Shiro is studying a display on the bridge and Keith sidles in and asks what he’s looking at. Halfway through the explanation of Atlas’s energy expenditures, Keith’s hip bumps his, and Shiro loses his train of thought entirely.

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, because if he says no, Keith might stop. He gamely picks up his explanation again, even though Keith hasn’t moved away. Their thighs are still touching. On impulse, carefully not thinking about what he’s doing, Shiro presses into it. Keith stays right where he is, giving as much pressure as he’s getting. God knows what Shiro says, but it must be passable, because Keith smiles and thanks him at the end.

*

The next thing that happens is both so much better and so, so much worse.

Keith finds him on the bridge of the Atlas one evening. If it were anyone else, Shiro would think of it as an interruption—he was meditating—but as soon as he sees Keith, he feels his face soften into a smile.

“You missed dinner,” Keith says. He comes to stand behind the chair Shiro’s in. Sam’s chair, technically, since Shiro usually stands. But it had been a long day, and he didn’t need to stand to hone his mental focus and commune with the ship.

Shiro hadn’t noticed until Keith mentioned dinner, but he is sort of hungry. It must be late if Keith came looking for him. Keith is peering over his shoulder now, taking in the dormant screen in front of Shiro.

“I hope you were napping,” Keith says lightly. It’s not quite a joke, so Shiro doesn’t laugh. He makes a sort of rueful hum of acknowledgement, which stretches out into a very different noise when Keith’s hands drop to his shoulders and his thumbs work circles into the knotted muscles of Shiro's neck.

Shiro wants to defend his decision to work through dinner—his connection with the Atlas might make the difference between winning and losing a battle some day—but whatever he might say, Keith knows already, and it’s pretty hard to string a sentence together at the moment. Keith massages his shoulders hard, like he has a personal grudge against Shiro’s stress. How did he know exactly what Shiro liked? It’s not like fighting the Galra and surviving in space left them a lot of time to discuss massage preferences.

Maybe Keith is just doing this the way he does everything else, throwing himself into it with relentless determination

God. It’s brain-melting. Shiro makes a thoroughly undignified noise.

“Good?” Keith asks, amused.

“Mmm,” Shiro says. He would let Keith do this forever. Lucky for him, Keith seems to have endless patience for undoing the tension in Shiro’s neck and shoulders. They stay like that for a few dreamy, quiet minutes, Shiro with his head tipped down and Keith working magic with his touch.

Keith’s right hand strays outward and comes to rest on the place where Shiro’s uniform ends and the metal implant begins. “Is it okay if I touch you here?”

“Yeah. I could probably use it there more than anywhere else,” Shiro admits. The Altean prosthetic isn’t heavy like the Galra one, but his shoulder still aches sometimes. Keith gentles his touch and works the scarred skin of Shiro’s shoulder through his uniform.

Shiro wishes he was naked, and then blushes. Good thing Keith can’t see his face.

It’s not even sexual. Or at least, it’s not _entirely_ sexual. Shiro shifts in his chair, newly aware of his half-hard cock. He wants Keith’s touch however he can get it. Sex would be amazing—Shiro spares a thought to wonder if it would bear any similarity to the fierce determination driving this massage—but he craves closeness and comfort more than anything.

Shiro is contemplating how risky and weird it would be to ask his best-friend-slash-teammate-slash-brother-slash-person-this-body-nearly-murdered to hold him— _too_ risky and weird, he’s pretty sure—when his stomach rumbles, one bodily need interrupting another.

Keith pauses in his work, one hand drifting down Shiro’s bicep and the other combing up through his hair, and Shiro bites back a whimper. Keith rests his hands there, like he knows what Shiro wants. A moment later, with a note of resigned amusement, he says, “I knew I should have brought you dinner.”

“Thanks for coming to find me.” It’s inadequate, but Shiro’s not sure how to thank Keith truthfully.

“Of course,” Keith says. He squeezes Shiro’s bicep. “Come on, let’s go. At this hour it’s instant noodles or nothing, so I hope you’re ready for that.”

*

It doesn’t get any better. Shiro thought he was lonely before. Now he knows what he’s missing. The more Keith touches him, the more he wants.

Luckily, more seems to be on offer. The hallways are too wide for someone as graceful and athletic as Keith to have brushed up against him this many times by accident, right? The chairs in the briefing room aren’t so close together that Keith’s foot _has_ to bump up against Shiro’s. And when the MFE pilots insist on hosting a What You Missed in the Last Few Years of Earth Pop Culture series on their rare evenings off, the couch isn’t so small or so jam-packed that Keith has to sit so he and Shiro are in contact from shoulder to hip to knee.

The movies aren’t so uniformly boring that Keith should _always_ end up asleep with his head on Shiro’s shoulder. (This has become a running joke. Even when Keith shows up late, no one will take the spot next to Shiro. The MFE pilots teasingly asked why once, and the answers were as follows:

1\. A lengthy hypothesis, obviously nonsense but still surprisingly convincing, that Shiro produces a soporific pheromone, which is why Keith always falls asleep, “and also I want to be able to reach the snacks” [Pidge]

2\. The ferociously territorial nature of Galra in general and Keith in particular, “look, that spot is like, his den now, I’m not going in there” [Lance]

3\. “I’m perfectly happy over here, out of range of... pheromones or violence or whatever” [Hunk]

4\. “Why would I sit there? I want to sit next to Lance” [Allura, followed by a memorable display of spluttering from Lance]

These jokes are all dumb, and some of them are borderline offensive, but Shiro can’t bring himself to chastise anyone, not when they’re loudly establishing for everyone else in the Garrison that Keith is always going to sit next to Shiro. Not that Keith has had any trouble establishing that by himself, in total silence, with looks and body language that give credence to Lance’s Galra stereotypes.)

*

Shiro’s not completely oblivious. The way Keith is behaving makes them look like a couple. Even if most of the touches between them are private, discreet, or plausibly accidental, the movie-night thing is visible to everyone. People are starting to assume. Shiro doesn’t mind. Then again, he wouldn’t mind if they were an actual couple. Keith’s desires are harder to parse. He’s spent so many years watching out for Shiro. Maybe this is just one more way to do that. Keith noticed Shiro was dying to be touched and then started silently fulfilling that need, regardless of his own interest.

Shiro hates the idea of Keith putting aside his own wants, but he also hates the idea of Keith not touching him, which might happen if he brings up this behavior in conversation. So he doesn’t. He says nothing, Keith continues to slink into the space next to him on the couch and cat-nap on his shoulder, and Shiro ought to be satisfied with that. Keith touching him has been so good—he’s been happier, more grounded. These days, he hardly ever thinks of himself as a ghost squatting in someone else’s body. It’s amazing how much that’s done for his mental health.

If not talking to Keith about the touching makes Shiro selfish or cowardly, at least he’s a selfish coward who’s not gasping himself awake every night from the same nightmare where he’s invisible and immaterial again.

So maybe he’s still lonely sometimes. It’s a lot less lonely than being dead.

The Paladins and Coran all give a wide berth to the subject of his relationship with Keith. Their little community-theater production in the common room had effectively silenced the MFEs, too. But there are other people at the Garrison, and some of them are too observant for Shiro’s comfort.

One of them is Keith’s mom.

She doesn’t say anything to him. That’s not her style. She just looks at him. Shiro might be as big as her, with an Altean arm and a giant mecha spaceship under his command, and he might have survived a year of the killing arena and Haggar’s unspeakable experiments, but those looks send chills down his spine. He feels like he should beg Krolia’s pardon for... something, or explain his intentions toward her son, except he doesn’t _know_ his intentions.

Well. Getting his body next to Keith’s body in any possible way they can manage it, that’s one of his intentions. He just doesn’t want to talk about it.

So he avoids Krolia, accepts whatever physical affection Keith wants to give him, and focuses on repairing the Earth and fighting off the fragments of the Empire.

Besides, Keith has made all the other moves in this game. Shiro’s waiting to see what he’ll do next. It’s not cowardice, it’s _strategy_. Not inaction, but patience.

*

They get called into battle. It takes them eighteen hours to disarm the outpost and by the end of it, Shiro almost wishes for disembodiment. He’s painfully aware of every articulation in his skeleton. They all feel like they’ve been carrying five times their allotted weight.

He drags himself into the shower afterward, and just as he’s finally heading toward his bed, there’s a knock on his door.

“It’s me,” Keith says. That’s good, because Shiro’s not changing out of his sweatpants, and he wouldn’t open the door for anyone else.

The circles under Keith’s eyes are faintly purple and the hair against his neck is still damp from the shower. Shiro gets all that from a glance, because he tries not to look at Keith head-on these days. It sends him right back to those first few days of his consciousness inhabiting this body, like somebody turned up the brightness on the whole world. It makes him want.

Shiro plans to ask what’s wrong, but Keith pushes past him in a way that’s all too physical, brushing the whole length of his body against Shiro’s. When he’s a step past Shiro and Shiro’s still staring out the open door, too tired to move, Keith comes back, gently shuts the door, and takes Shiro by the hand.

On purpose. Interlaced fingers and everything.

Keith tugs on his hand. Oh, they’re going somewhere. Shiro follows, because why wouldn’t he, and Keith leads them to the bedroom.

Keith has coaxed him into bed and is getting in next to him before Shiro asks, “What’re you doing?”

“Sleeping, I hope,” Keith says.

“Mm,” Shiro says, because that sounds good and he’s too tired to examine it any further. His head has hit the pillow and he’s not lifting it for anything less that a second Galra invasion.

And then Keith fits himself behind Shiro and wraps an arm around his middle, and all the tension in Shiro’s body exits in a single long, satisfied sigh. Keith is smaller than him, but he runs so hot that it makes his presence feel huge.

“God,” Shiro mumbles, too happy to worry about what he’s saying. “I’d think I’d died and gone to Heaven, but dying didn’t feel nearly this good.”

“Not funny.”

“A little funny,” Shiro protests. “The point is only being alive feels this good.”

“At least when we’re touching,” Keith says. “Not so much when it’s hour eighteen in the cockpit.”

Shiro hums his agreement, nestling further into the bed and into Keith. It’s warm and soft. There’s no substitute for falling asleep in someone’s arms. Whatever else he has to say, it fades into darkness.

*

He wakes up to morning light skimming the window sill under the blinds and Keith still clinging to him. Shiro normally jumps out of bed an instant after opening his eyes, but today he lets his eyes close again just to savor the sensation.

It’s everything he’s been yearning for and more. _This_ is what his body is for. Not sparring, not commanding a ship, not running or lifting things. The whole purpose of being alive and having a physical form is just to lie right here in Keith’s arms, with the hot line of Keith’s body pressing against his own.

God, he should have asked for this. Why did he spend so many nights without it? If he’d known Keith was willing to do this for him, he would have asked.

 _Is_ Keith willing to do this? Or was it a one-time thing?

“Stop thinking so hard,” Keith says, the words muffled by his pillow and Shiro’s body.

Fuck. He _is_ hard. From the feel of it, so is Keith, but in his case it’s probably just morning wood. Maybe he’ll generously assume the same for Shiro.

Keith kisses the back of his neck. “Shiro.”

Oh.

For weeks, Shiro’s been stacking justifications for Keith’s behavior—selfless duty, friendship, whatever—into an elaborate house of cards, and the kiss is the finger-flick that knocks the whole thing over.

“I’m not great at talking about this stuff,” Keith says, which given the context is _hilarious_ , “but I thought I was making myself clear.”

Shiro has a sudden, dizzying perspective shift: Keith has spent the last few weeks seeking out opportunities to touch Shiro. Because he wanted to. For his own pleasure.

And because he was flirting. With Shiro.

No one can claim Shiro wasn’t receptive, but he didn’t exactly reciprocate.

Shiro twists in Keith’s arms, grins, and practically dives between his legs. He tugs Keith’s underwear down his hips—fuck, but it’s delicious to watch Keith wriggle like that—and Keith obligingly gets rid of his t-shirt. Shiro doesn’t intend to stare, since he’s on a mission and there will be time for that later, but he can’t help it. Keith is lithe and golden, and somehow a week’s worth of bruises and a lifetime’s worth of battle scars only serve to emphasize how beautiful he is. Shiro wants to memorize every line of him, to touch every inch.

But right now he’s focused on one stretch of inches in particular.

For such a compact, narrow person, Keith has a surprisingly big dick. Shiro has a funny impulse to stop and congratulate him, but he doesn’t need words for that. With all of Keith’s long, thick cock straining up towards him—the best compliment he’s ever received—he’s not interested in talking. Shiro licks his lips. Keith takes a very quiet, sharp little breath. Something about it feels so pure. It’s not a performance, not a moan the neighbors can hear. It’s just a sound he couldn’t help making because he wants this so much.

Shiro was wrong earlier: _that’s_ the best compliment he’s ever received. Maybe he can get Keith to make more sounds like that. He slicks the liquid pearling at the tip of Keith’s cock down the shaft and lowers his mouth to the head.

Shiro drags his tongue over the slit and Keith bucks his hips. Shiro catches his gaze, delighted, and Keith is already flushed and bright-eyed. “Shiro, please.”

In the weeks of his loneliness, he’d yearned for closeness. Touch. Pressure. Warmth. Now, with the wiry hair around the base of Keith’s cock brushing the tip of his nose, Shiro considers all the other intimacies on offer: the salty taste of Keith on his tongue, the faint scent of his skin, the way he writhes and pants in response to every stroke. Worth savoring, every one.

When Shiro slows down, Keith grabs him by the hair and pushes.

Shiro pops Keith’s cock out of his mouth so he can grin and say, “You and your need for speed.”

“Haven’t you made me wait long enough?”

Shiro considers the question, watching his hand give Keith’s cock one long, lazy stroke. At length, he says, “What’s the rush?”

“Shiro, I mean this literally, figuratively, and from the bottom of my heart, _suck my fucking dick_.”

Of course sex with Keith would be like this—familiar. Shiro laughs and goes even slower. Keith groans. The sound starts out theatrical and frustrated, then winds up real and desperate when Shiro slides his other hand between Keith’s thighs. He fondles Keith’s balls with his free hand, then rubs his finger against the tender skin behind them. Keith’s grip on his hair tightens.

“Shiro, Shiro—”

God, Shiro loves that. His name on Keith’s tongue. If his mouth weren’t full, he’d say Keith’s name right back, but he’s communicating what he can. He works his hand and his mouth faster along the length of Keith’s cock, pressing the fingers of his other hand against the rim of Keith’s hole, and Keith thrusts into his mouth, cries out and comes hard down Shiro’s throat.

Shiro has barely swallowed when Keith grabs him by the shoulders and hauls him into a kiss. There aren’t many people in the universe who can manhandle Shiro like that—few who’d try and only one he’d let succeed—and Keith’s strength and decisiveness send a thrill right through him. The kiss puts their bodies in messy alignment, a knee here and an arm there, and Shiro relishes every point of contact.

 _So good_ , he keeps thinking. _So good_. Keith pulls his sweatpants down and Shiro kicks them off while Keith palms his ass like holding on with both hands is the only thing keeping him alive. Shiro’s never had sex like this, and they’ve barely done anything. It makes him feel a little bit like waking up in this new body: exhilarated, overwhelmed.

Shiro breaks their kiss to breathe, and then blurts, “I love you.”

He presses his forehead to Keith’s and closes his eyes. He hadn’t meant to let that out quite so soon. He’d woken up this morning not even sure if Keith really wanted to be here. Shiro hadn’t wanted to let himself believe it was real. Hadn’t wanted to risk it. Now he does.

“Is it that embarrassing, being in love with me?”

Shiro lifts his head. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. It just came out.” His face is hot. He looks away, and Keith touches his face until they make eye contact again.

“I know how that is,” Keith says, so lightly that it takes Shiro a moment to realize he’s talking about their fight. Shiro’s only been able to flinch away from that memory. The fight features in his nightmares. Nothing good could have come from that day—except Keith had said _I love you_.

Shiro wishes he’d say it again, free from the context of one of the worst days of both of their lives. He might have learned to ask for some things, but you can’t ask someone to say _I love you_. You have to wait for it and accept it when—or if—it happens.

“Shiro. Come on. _Obviously_. Obviously I love you.” Keith reaches between them, where Shiro’s cock is trapped against his stomach, and takes firm hold. “What do I have to do to get through to you?”

“That’s a good start,” Shiro says, a little faint. Keith has barely touched him and he’s already close.

“I love you,” Keith says again. He gives Shiro a crooked smile. “I’ll say it as many times as it takes. Can I ask you something?”

“Mm,” Shiro says, because Keith is stroking him steadily and it’s hard to think about anything other than rhythm of his hand.

“You know how you were when Allura first transferred your consciousness out of the Black Lion? Are you still… sometimes when I touch you, it feels like you might still be like that.”

“Oh,” Shiro says. He hadn’t thought of it, but now that Keith points it out, it’s not wrong. But it’s only Keith who has this effect on him. Keith twists his hand a little, and Shiro gasps and takes a shuddering breath. “Maybe.”

“You’re very responsive.” A long pause. “I think about that sometimes. About what it would be like to hold you close and fuck you.”

Fuck, there’s an image. Even the thought of it undoes him. Shiro spills in hot, quick jets onto Keith’s stomach, then presses trembling kisses to Keith’s neck. “Yes. That. I want that. Let’s do that.”

Keith laughs and kisses him on the lips. “It’s nice, knowing for sure you want something as much as I do.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, pressing Keith into the mattress with his full weight, skin to skin, sweaty and sticky and alive. “It is.”


End file.
